The more you explore Shaolin, the less you can be sure of the ship's interior: The turns of gravity, the shifts of the mandala, the way in which everything connects to everything and nothing.

There are four things you can always find inside the ship:

• Your cell
• Your companions
• The cathedral
• The tree

You look for everything else at Shaolin's discretion. At least, that is what the Abbot says, when you can find him.

That's what you spend most of your time at Shaolin doing - searching. And normally that's what they ask you when you wake up each morning, your personal Hospitable Angelic Brother standing at your elbow, monitoring your REM patterns, "what will you search for today?" I normally say things like, "sex" or "opiates." It never gets a rise out of them - the Hospitable Angelic Brothers are all of the old Homely Progressive school, aptly named. The HABs, had they not known me better, were likely to have tried to oblige. Some mornings, I wouldn't even have protested. This is why it shocks you (and not just because shock is their favorite way of waking you up), no matter how many times it happens, to wake up not to a REM-obsessed HAB with an annoying disregard for privacy, but to a devotee of the Bureaucracy standing rigidly still and eyeing your torture points. It's not that this never happens in my line of work, just that bureaucratic devotees are a fuck of a way to wake up in the morning since they are neither progressive, nor homely, nor even terribly communicative. "The Abbot wants to see you," and that's all they say. They'll wait while you get dressed, assuming you don't take too long. If you do, they just drag you naked through the mandala. I don't take too long. The Abbot does not like to wait.
posted by RR at 6:30 AM

I ducked the swing she aimed at my face by inches. Where the hell was this place? Frank didn't say. The bots didn't either. I pulled up and vanished. Gone. Poof. Poof. Back in Shaolin. I wondered what happened to her after I did that, but only a little. She was the kind of girl that probably happened to a lot. Amazonian. They don't fuck around. FE-folks (fully enhanced) pull up when they cross an Amazon. Otherwise they're fuckind dumb (plenty of those) or fucking masochistic (fewer of those - they're smarters, just weird). The monks don't blink. Frank wastes energy poofing around the deck. More monks are floating around the top of the tree. Poof. poof. poof. poof. Franks appears near to top of the tree, ahead of all of them, fakes gravity, lets himself fall. I tell him to calm the fuck down. This is all his idea. He looks at me to say "fuck off" in that way so he doesn't have to actually say it. He's built up too much energy and he's has to wind his bots down. They're feeding back into his metabolism. I know the feeling. Poof. Frank's beside me. The monk's don't say anything to us - the ship's core is a cone of monk-made silence they've willed into place more solidly each day we've been staying with them. Frank breathes heavy but quiet until - poof - another monk is there, giving us a message from the abbott. He wants us out of the core as much as possible. The monks are feeling corrupted, distracted. We should come see him for more information. Now. I fake some gravity up and grab Frank and let it pull us through a tunnel after the messenger. We cross the old labyrinthe, the cold storage tunnels that look out on the ancient reliquaries hovering around the temple in space. We pass the first core tree and go to the old, administrative part of the ship. You can't pull up to this part. The abbot doesn't allow it. The abbot's receptionist is young, non-monastic. He wears tight pants, tight shirt, and large collar. He's no FE, but he's got enough hair product in to fake it to the average person. He swishes his hips around the office and then leads us in to see Him. We aren't the abbot's favorites and he makes that clear. But he knows why we're here and doesn't want us to leave. He's reasonable like that. Bastard.
posted by RR at 11:44 AM

I haven’t been here in two years and everyone looks familiar. That’s all I know. Fuck. Frank said this would be the trigger. He’s normally full of shit, but I wanted to believe him this time. I need to believe something. I focus on the most familiar face… but he’s only familiar because he’s pretty. It’s a long, narrow face, with an angular, hawk-like. He smiles at his companion. Why do I know him? This is one of those places that might have drawn the same crowd two years ago, day in and day out. This is one of those places, also, where you might see some recovering celebrity. Was he on television? He leaves and rides away on his bike, taking my questions with him. I am thinking that maybe I can call Frank and have him pick me up. I hate the fact that not one of them remembers anything. There’s a guy across the way looking at me. New, came in when the familiar guy left. But I don’t think he thinks I’m familiar. I think he’s checking me out. Maybe he’s a cop looking for a mark. Maybe he’s one of those cultists looking for a sacrifice. Maybe he’s the cultist of a cop. And maybe he just wants sex, but that seems unlikely. He’s got a wedding ring on and seems too young to have gotten bored with it yet. But do I know. None of the minds in my brain could remember shit for silver, as my mom used to say. “You can’t remember shit for silver.” “You can’t remember where your hand is.” “You can’t remember.” It’s comforting to remember that it can’t all be traced to the incident, like it makes me less of a freak. Like it means there might be other absent-minded people out there. Like maybe the guy is looking at me because he forgot to look away. Like maybe you don’t need six amnesiac minds in your head in order to be crazy. I don’t want to call Frank yet, so I am trying to remember what else there is to do. Where did I used to walk to from here? Or did I drive or take a cab or call my driver to come get me. I can’t remember, and so much has changed I don’t know where to start looking for anchors. I call Frank and he’s there in a minute, keyed into my visual receptors, plugged into my subvocals, standing in front of me like a Victorian butler. “Anything?” “Nothing, can I go?” “I suppose, but you should try again at a different time of day.” He’s write, but I just grimace, and then we’re up and back in space at the Shaolin. The monks make Frank soy-pheasant in the replicator. I have roasted glutern rattlesnake, and we float around our cells, nabbing nuggets of food in zero-G. We suck hot, pureed lentils through a straw. Shaolin isn’t a new ship, it’s hardly luxury, but it’s monks are true culinary devotees.
posted by RR at 11:26 AM